Valid question! Speaking for myself, I was born and raised here. We had no Big 4 teams when I was growing up, so I latched on to my dad’s Chicago fandom because that’s where his family was from. Bears, Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks. Obvi they had the early-to-mid 2010s dynasty, so I watched a lot of hockey and picked up on the rules pretty quick. When the Knights became a thing, the reaction was tepid at first due to the odd name, but a combination of their lifting our spirits after 1 October, the Cup run and being the first team from my hometown solidified them as my No. 1 team. Now that’s my story, but I have friends who pretty much did the same thing. Not necessarily switching allegiances completely, but prioritizing the Knights and putting their other team on the backburner and rooting for them in “secret.” In general though, most people down here won’t be ashamed to admit that they knew nothing about hockey prior to the Knights and that the team kickstarted their fandom of the sport. And yes, I still follow the Hawks, just not as much as I used to. I have a closet full of Hawks gear and Stanley Cup champs stuff, I can’t just ignore that part of my history. Lol Sorry for the wall of text.
Guinness Hawaiian Shirt,
Best Guinness Hawaiian Shirt
Yeah!! You could literally watch it happening at the time. His first tour was in bars and small clubs so you could actually watch him mix. But he quickly bumped up to festivals with stacked line ups. Like i said there was not much transition between songs. Lots of stopping and starting and at StarScape specifically, i remember there was this tension because he was visibly VERY nervous. His voice was so shakey as he addressed the Guinness Hawaiian Shirt. Everyone was LOVING the tracks but in the Guinness Hawaiian Shirt of the whole fest everyone was aware that he was not DJing on the level with everyone else. He was just trying to keep the wheels from totally coming off his time slot. HOWEVER it was cool because a couple more experienced artists came out to his set up to kind of help him through it. It was sick. You could see them couching him a bit and also just being another homie out there to make him comfortable. Thats just one example but we all watched him slowly getting better at DJing over those first couple years. As a musician myself I also know that kind of teaching /sharing with a new artist is always part of their growth. It was just cool that you could watch it happening in real time with Sonny.
If you watch the “Directors Talk” episodes on Disney+ the last episode has a wonderful segment on this. The “Directors Talk” show (short segments 20-30 minutes long) has wonderful insights in the process of making the show and I highly recommend watching it, even if you don’t watch The Mandalorian or have any interest in Star Wars. My personal favorite was watching the faces on of the other directors when Bryce Dallas Howard talked about being a five year old girl sitting in a meeting with her father (director Ron Howard), George Lucas, and legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (which Hollywood has been ripping off for decades). Dave Filoni’s episode The Jedi (S2E5) was a wonderful tribute to Kurosawa’s work. Edit: the show is called Gallery Star Wars: The Mandalorian. Thank you for the correction